Megan Hill and Amy Staats, Playwrights/ Jazzercizers

M: I’m Megan Hill. I’m originally from Seattle, WA, but now I’m
from Brooklyn, NY.

A: My name is Amy Staats. I moved around a lot as a kid, so I’m
from a lot of places, but now I’m from Brooklyn.

What is the project
you are working on at SPACE?

A: I am writing a play called Eddie and Dave: A Fictionalized Tale of Van Halen. I’m working on
it with Margot Bordelon and Megan Hill, and it’s been really great working with
them here. I spent the first couple days working on the draft, and then we’ve
just been working as a group, going through it, lots of ideas being thrown
around.

M: We’ve been working to bang out a solid draft of the script.
Amy’s been a monster, writing-wise. She’s been cranking out so many new pages.
Then Margot and I have been bouncing off ideas and constantly reading the
script out loud, then it goes back to writing, and its just been great. It all
starts with Amy, and then it goes into a group effort, then it’s back to Amy,
then a group effort. So it’s a nice little ping-pong of collaboration.

A: I really like the process because it’s such a big story and
to work with such a great team is just a dream.

Where have you been
spending most of your time at SPACE?

M: We’ve been bouncing around. I actually think we’ve been in a
different room everyday, haven’t we?

A: Absolutely. Today, we’re in the garage. Yesterday,
we were in the corncrib. We’ve gone into the antique room.

M: This is also a very physical show, so we’ve been training in
the barn every morning, doing a little Jazzercising. I mean, David Lee Roth
does toe touches. You know, like jumping-splits-toe-touches, which I will never
be able to do, but we should at least look buff.

A: Oh, we also had a meeting down by the lake.

M: Yes! We had a canoe meeting, then a dock meeting, then a
meeting where we just strolled by and looked at the horses.

A: It’s funny, the time I’ve spent writing has been all over.
The first day I was in the garage, but then I’ve been bouncing between the
window seat in the antique room and my bedroom. It’s fun because the rooms are
so extraordinary and because you get so many shifts in environment, to be
private when you want or to get that small degree of public space when you’d
like that.

What’s coming up next
for you and your project?

A: The next step is to really get a strong draft, and then we’ll
be applying for a lot of grants and residencies. We’re going to also do a
fundraiser for a workshop because it’s really going to take about six months of
development before it’s in a place to be presented to people. We really want to
do that the right way and put ourselves in a position to make it fly.

M: We want it to look impeccable, but also I think there’s a
thing about it to where you have two women playing Eddie and Dave, these iconic
rockers in this time where MTV was just starting. So instead of trying to
compete or recreate that, how do we make it theatrical and how do we make it
where we’re not trying to do impersonations of these people or making fun of
the era. So we’re also playing with different ways of staging the performances
or playing the instruments.

A: We’re just expressing the excitement and the coming together
of these two different energies. The story itself is very Greek. It’s about
power and timing and introverts and extroverts-

M: Ego.

A: Yeah! And there are a lot of universal themes, like the Cain
and Abel story, kind of. So Megan and I are both interested in taking what is
sort of a lowbrow subject and digging into the depths of it and finding the
true substance of it.

If you were
reincarnated as a farm animal, what farm animal would you be and why?

M: You know who I would love to be? I get so much delight every
morning when we’re doing Jazzercise hearing the rooster. And then I love the
random parts of the day when I hear the rooster because it reminds me I’m on a
farm. I’m not just in this beautiful converted barn; I’m on a legit-freaking
farm. I’m also really delighted by the two horses and their comradery and their
sweet flipping tails.

A: I’m really interested in that orange cat because I came here
in June, when he seemed to be pretty standoffish, and now he seems to be
hanging out a lot and coming up and he often hangs out around where we’re
working and wants to be petted. I like the idea of being an animal that seems
standoffish, but has room to grow. Also, he’s really handsome.